A year of flowers #12: Swale desert parsley

 

Lomatium ambiguum

Not long after I first moved here (early 90s), a guy who lived in our area introduced himself, and asked for a tour of the property, which at the time was in its weedy former-alfalfa-field mode.  Jim Roberts is a great musician, and weirdly we never played music together, but he was also extremely knowledgeable about local native plants and was really my first native plant sensei.  As we walked around, he commented that my soil here seemed to be in very good shape, and he pointed out native species that were hanging on, including this lomatium species.  It is on the uncommon side of things, but I had a nice population in the southern fence row, and he encouraged me to collect the seeds and spread them around, which has turned out to be pretty successful. He also took me to various sites in our area, and showed me threatened places where plants could be rescued.  Whenever I see this plant bloom (and several other species he introduced me to), I always have a wave of appreciation for his guidance in getting this project rolling.  Thanks, Jim!

A year of flowers #11: Golden currant

 

Ribes aureum

This image, the Shooting Star (#10) and the Lomatium you haven't seen yet were all photographed yesterday (4/27).  It's getting to be that time of year where many plants start blooming, and I will try to keep up.  

I have never planted Golden currant, but a few years ago, several just showed up.  A couple sprouted near the house, and I moved them out to the prairie.  And then there were two, including this particular one, that sprouted out in the prairie that same year.  It must have been the year of perfect Golden currant sprouting conditions.  There have been years like that with other plants--one year there were three Blue elderberries sprouting up.  I've introduced the category of rescued plants, but this is a new category--gifts.  I have learned that native plants will just appear, and I had better identify what every unfamiliar plant is before I assume that it's an evil invasive thing. Some plants may just have been waiting around for a chance, and I think the birds and deer bring seeds and whatnot in with them.  I accept the gifts.  Golden currants are welcome to settle in.

A year of flowers #10: Shooting stars

 

 Dodecatheon pulchellum

One part of this prairie project has been to identify threatened spots around me here in Palouse and try to rescue plants before they are destroyed.  Numerous times, when I have seen plants threatened, I have hesitated to intervene, and then someone comes through spraying, graveling, or dredging, and--it's gone.   I continue to see these sites destroyed, which makes me sad.  We have to try to save this before it's gone forever!  

So, as time goes on, I have decided to try to save plants about to be taken out, one way or another, and my Shooting stars are an example.   Early on, I mentioned how I came to transplant Grass widows, and there will be several examples of this sort of rescue in my "year of flowers."  This delicate little flower blows my mind with its beauty, and when it comes back every year, I have hope that I can rescue more plants and keep this going.  To that end, one of my most helpful allies has been my friend Charlotte, who gave me some super-fine mesh bags, where I can bag a flower like this, the bunnies or deer don't eat it, and I can collect the seeds.  The seeds for this tiny thing are the smallest tiny grains you can imagine.  I have not yet gotten these to sprout from seed.

A year of flowers #9: Miner's lettuce

Claytonia perfoliata

Miner's lettuce is evidently closely related to the Claytonia parviflora I posted the other day, here growing in the dappled shade of a Ponderosa pine.  I have never tried to eat the other Claytonia, though I think it's edible, but this one is tasty.  I think it tastes just like butter lettuce, which of course is how it earned its common name.

A year of flowers #8: Blue-eyed Mary

Collinsia parviflora

I love this little annual native plant.  To get a sense of scale, this is about two inches tall.  Blue-eyed Mary was spread around my property when I started, and my efforts to eliminate invasive non-native plants impacted it--the dreaded "Storksbill" (Erodium cicutarium) blooms about this same time.  But, like the Midget phlox (Phlox gracilis) that is not yet blooming there behind it (the shiny green leaves), a friend gave me these cool little mesh bags, and I have captured seeds every year, and have been returning it to its former haunts, as here. It spreads like a blanket, once it gets happy, and it makes me happy to see it doing well every place I've reintroduced it. 

A year of flowers #6 (and #7): Montia dichotoma and Claytonia parviflora

  

  Montia dichotoma

 

Claytonia parviflora

 

I thought I was going out to photograph just one little annual five-petaled flower today, the M. dichotoma, which I had identified last year.  I have been trying to identify all the tiny annual flowers that seem to play an important role in Palouse prairie, so I can stimulate their spread throughout the property.  But when I went to try to capture photographs today, I realized... wait, these are two different flowers... You can just see the leaves on the Claytonia, and I realize now that I see these plants all over the place here.  They look like little rosettes of spade-shaped leaves when they first show up.  We also have the classic Miners' lettuce--Claytonia perfoliata (not yet blooming).  I guess I will never stop learning about this prairie project...

A year of flowers #5: Desert parsley

 

Lomatium grayii

This lomatium (aka, "Desert parsley") is the next to bloom out there.  This was an early success for me.  This species grows all over the place around Palouse, and a friend of mine showed me a good spot years ago and said--show up with a grocery bag when the seeds are ripe. They easily sprouted in profusion wherever I worked them into the soil.  One of the tricks of restoring Palouse prairie, I've discovered, is to recognize plants like this that are going to be aggressive (there are several), and hold back a little on those, so that they don't dominate the landscape.  I had a wave of Western asters go through the middle of the property ten years ago that was pretty epic.  Now it has calmed down a bit, but no Palousian should go without Western aster seed...give me a call.  This year I will be at a point in this process where I am ready to work more of L. grayii into the project.

A year of flowers #4: Yellow bells

 

Yellow bell (Fritillaria pudica)

I have two of these blooming at the moment, a small flower about three inches tall.   Apparently the bulb is very tasty, and was eaten both raw and cooked by Native Americans.  The voles love them as well, and I once had bought eight of these bulbs for six dollars each, and they were lovely, but were eaten by voles.  It is covered in a post here about ten years ago (!).  And since then, I have never seen the bulbs for sale anywhere.  So, I feel lucky to have a couple hanging on, a gift from a local friend who had many acres of native plants, and I have been studying how to propagate them from seed, which I ought to be able to do, so maybe there will be more here in the future, but I doubt I will ever have enough to try to eat one.

A year of flowers #3: Grass widows

Grass widows (Olsynium douglasii), a few days ago, in my prairie.

With this post, I am finally into flowers blooming on my actual property.  My relationship with this flower goes back nearly three decades, when I used to walk down to a little fragment of fairly-unspoiled prairie about a half mile east of me.  Grass widows covered a hillside on the way down to the river.  One day in early April, a huge pile of dirt was dumped in this spot--the property owner was about to dig the foundation for a house right in the middle of native prairie.  Dozens of clumps of these were poking up through the fill dirt, and I thought... what the heck.  I assumed that there was little chance that they'd live, but they would be dead for sure within days if I left them, so I got ten clumps, and moved them to a few spots on my property that had not-really-yet become a prairie restoration project.  They all lived.  And every Spring I have taken the fattest clumps here and divided them into 2-3 smaller clumps, and planted those.  They seed and spread themselves all over as well.  Now I have hundreds.

While it is generally true that scientific names for plants are more stable than "common names," this is not the case with Grass widows.  They were Sisyrinchium douglasii for years, until the official name was changed recently based on DNA evidence, but we still call them "rinkies."  Out of hundreds of blooms, nearly all will be that lovely pink color, but rarely you will see a white bloom like this one.  Until last week, I hadn't seen this one bloom here for years. 

A year of flowers #2: Sagebrush buttercup

 

Sagebrush buttercup (Ranunculus glaberrimus), Washington/Idaho border, east of Palouse.

This one isn't in my prairie, either.  My two clumps seem unwilling to go for a bloom this year (maybe they're slow?), and they have been overtaken by the Grass widows, which are putting on a show already.  I want to post buttercups first because, truly, the buttercup is the first Spring flower here.  Buttercups have been coming up in sunny spots on Kamiak Butte and other bits of native prairie for a few weeks now.  I went to one of my favorite sites this morning so I could find one in bloom.